1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to providing information associated with computers. More particularly, the invention relates to a method, apparatus and article of manufacture for tracking processes.
2. Background of the Related Art
In many computer systems, particularly computer systems using multi-process or multi-threading operating systems such as the IBM AIX and the IBM OS/400, the operation of running or executing of an application program is divided into work units, commonly known as processes, jobs, tasks or threads. To perform the work of the application program, the processes use socket objects to communicate with other processes.
These processes may run on the same computer system or on different computer systems. For example, a server computer system may service the requests of many client computer systems. To service the request from a particular client computer, a process is created in the server computer. This process uses a socket object to communicate with a corresponding process at the client computer.
Information associated with the different processes and socket objects is displayed as a user interface on the display of a computer system. The current user interface programs may provide a list of active TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) connections, a list of active listening local sockets or a list of work units, e.g., processes, jobs or threads. However, as computer networks include multiple server and client computer systems, a large number of processes are running on the various computer systems. Thus, there is a need to improve tracking of related processes, e.g., those processes using a common socket object for communication.